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Spotlight

The Blast Radius of Interior’s Anti-Renewables Order Could Be Huge

Solar and wind projects will take the most heat, but the document leaves open the possibility for damage to spread far and wide.

Wetlands, Donald Trump, and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s still too soon to know just how damaging the Interior Department’s political review process for renewables permits will be. But my reporting shows there’s no scenario where the blast radius doesn’t hit dozens of projects at least — and it could take down countless more.

Last week, Interior released a memo that I was first to report would stymie permits for renewable energy projects on and off of federal lands by grinding to a halt everything from all rights-of-way decisions to wildlife permits and tribal consultations. At minimum, those actions will need to be vetted on a project-by-project basis by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the office of the Interior deputy secretary — a new, still largely undefined process that could tie up final agency actions in red tape and delay.

For the past week, I’ve been chatting with renewables industry representatives and their supporters to get their initial reactions on what this latest blow from the Trump administration will do to their business. The people I spoke with who were involved in development and investment were fearful of being quoted, but the prevailing sense was of near-total uncertainty, including as to how other agencies may respond to such an action from a vital organ of the federal government’s environmental review process.

The order left open the possibility it could also be applied to any number of projects “related to” solar and wind — a potential trip-wire for plans sited entirely on private lands but requiring transmission across Bureau of Land Management property to connect to the grid. Heatmap Pro data shows 96 renewable energy projects that are less than 7 miles away from federal lands, making them more likely to need federal approval for transmission or road needs, and another 47 projects that are a similar distance away from critical wildlife habitat. In case you don’t want to do the math, that’s almost 150 projects that may hypothetically wind up caught in this permitting pause, on top of however many solar and wind projects that are already in its trap.

At least 35 solar projects and three wind projects — Salmon Falls Wind in Idaho and the Jackalope and Maestro projects in Wyoming — are under federal review, according to Interior’s public data. Advocates for renewable energy say these are the projects that will be the most crucial test cases to watch.

“Unfortunately they’ll be the guinea pigs,” said Mariel Lutz, a conservation policy analyst for the Center for American Progress, who today released a report outlining the scale of job losses that could occur in the wind sector under Trump. “The best way to figure out what this means is to have people and projects try or not try various things and see what happens.”

The data available is largely confined to projects under National Environmental Policy Act review, however. In my conversations with petrified developers this past week, it’s abundantly clear no one really knows just how far-reaching these delays may become. Only time will tell.

Yellow

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Spotlight

How a Tiny Community Blocked Battery Storage in Over Half of Los Angeles County

Much of California’s biggest county is now off limits to energy storage.

Wildfire and battery storage.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

Residents of a tiny unincorporated community outside of Los Angeles have trounced a giant battery project in court — and in the process seem to have blocked energy storage projects in more than half of L.A. County, the biggest county in California.

A band of frustrated homeowners and businesses have for years aggressively fought a Hecate battery storage project proposed in Acton, California, a rural unincorporated community of about 7,000 residents, miles east of the L.A. metro area. As I wrote in my first feature for The Fight over a year ago, this effort was largely motivated by concerns about Acton as a high wildfire risk area. Residents worried that in the event of a large fire, a major battery installation would make an already difficult emergency response situation more dangerous. Acton leaders expressly opposed the project in deliberations before L.A. County planning officials, arguing that BESS facilities in general were not allowed under the existing zoning code in unincorporated areas.

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Hotspots

A Hawk Headache for Washington’s Biggest Wind Farm

And more of the week’s top news about renewable energy conflicts.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Benton County, Washington – A state permitting board has overridden Governor Bob Ferguson to limit the size of what would’ve been Washington’s largest wind project over concerns about hawks.

  • In a unanimous decision targeting Horse Heaven Wind Farm, the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council determined that no turbines could be built within two miles of any potential nests for ferruginous hawks, a bird species considered endangered by the state. It’s unclear how many turbines at Horse Heaven will be impacted but reports indicate at least roughly 40 turbines – approximately 20% of a project with a 72,000-acre development area.
  • Concerns about bird deaths and nest disruptions have been a primary point of contention against Horse Heaven specifically, cited by the local Yakama Nation as well as raised by homeowners concerned about viewsheds. As we told you last year, these project opponents as well as Benton County are contesting the project’s previous state approval in court. In July, that battle escalated to the Washington Supreme Court, where a decision is pending on whether to let the challenge proceed to trial.

2. Adams County, Colorado – This is a new one: Solar project opponents here are making calls to residents impersonating the developer to collect payments.

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Q&A

Trump Cuts Solar Industry’s Experiments to Win Hearts and Minds

A conversation with David Gahl of SI2

The Fight Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week I spoke with David Gahl, executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, or SI2, which is the Solar Energy Industries Association’s independent industry research arm. Usually I’d chat with Gahl about the many different studies and social science efforts they undertake to try and better understand siting conflicts in the U.S.. But SI2 reached out first this time, hoping to talk about how all of that work could be undermined by the Trump administration’s grant funding cuts tied to the government shutdown. (The Energy Department did not immediately get back to me with a request for comment for this story, citing the shutdown.)

The following conversation was edited lightly for clarity.

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